APPENDIX Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson as President of the United INDEX 519 525 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THOMAS JEFFERSON CHAPTER I YOUTH AND EDUCATION IN the year 1691, buying and selling in Virginia had to be done in markets established by law. A further act of the Legislature created ports of entry and clearing; and all goods and products brought into the colony, or sent out, were liable to forfeiture if they did not pass through these ports. Under this Act for Ports of 1691, a fifty-acre field, belonging to Benjamin Read, was laid off into eighty-five lots; and this was the beginning of historic Yorktown. A list of the original lot buyers shows the names of Governor Francis Nicholson, Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., Duddley Digges, and Thomas Jefferson. The father of this part-founder of Yorktown had emigrated from near Mount Snowdon, in Wales, and had represented Flower de Hundred in the first legislative assembly of white men which ever convened on the American continent-the Jamestown Assembly of 1619. Captain Thomas Jefferson of Osborne's, on the James, was the grandson of John Jefferson, the burgess of 1619; and a younger son of this Captain Thomas Jefferson was Peter, the father of Thomas Jefferson, of Monticello. In those days, lands and slaves were entailed upon the oldest son; and nothing less than an act of the Legislature could bring the property upon the market. Peter Jefferson being a younger son, the family home descended to the older brother, who remained at Osborne's, while Peter himself went forth into the world to win his own way to fortune. To this fact alone seems to be due the impression that Peter Jefferson was a man of inferior social position. Biographers, having no eyes for the head of the family at Osborne's, follow Peter as he surveys land, locates state grants, fights Indians, and makes a new home on the western border; and they get the idea that the Jeffersons were not people of the first class. There is no evidence whatever to support the assertion. Peter Jefferson had practically the same education as George Washington, adopted the business of land surveying as Washington did, and married, like Washington, a lady of the highest social rank. While he got no immense fortune by her, as Washington won with the Widow Custis, he proved |